Famed Crystal Cathedral to become Catholic church

Originally published June 28, 2012 at 12:00 am

Updated June 28, 2012 at 6:25 am

Retired schoolteacher Dolores Rommel has followed the Rev. Robert H. Schuller almost her entire adult life: She was baptized in his church as a young woman, sent her children to his Sunday school and laid her husband to rest near the soaring, glass-paned Crystal Cathedral that was to be the televangelist's ultimate legacy.

Retired schoolteacher Dolores Rommel has followed the Rev. Robert H. Schuller almost her entire adult life: She was baptized in his church as a young woman, sent her children to his Sunday school and laid her husband to rest near the soaring, glass-paned Crystal Cathedral that was to be the televangelist’s ultimate legacy.

But when the Roman Catholic church bought the famous sanctuary and its cemetery in bankruptcy court last year, Rommel began looking for another spiritual home. She has resigned herself to being entombed in a Catholic cemetery so she can be near her husband, but not without plenty of soul-searching.

“I have no choice. I am going to be buried there because that was his choice and we paid a lot for that vault,” said Rommel, who bought a two-casket tomb with her husband in 1997. “At the time, who would know that this was going to happen?”

The Crystal Cathedral congregation recently announced that it will vacate its modernist steel-and-glass church by June 2013. The Diocese of Orange renamed the church Christ Cathedral earlier this month and plans to turn the Protestant landmark where the “Hour of Power” TV ministry is based into its spiritual and administrative headquarters. The fast-growing, 1.2 million-person diocese bought the church campus for nearly $58 million last year.

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The upcoming transition has been an emotional one for many longtime congregants like Rommel, who watched Schuller’s blockbuster dynasty struggle to survive in recent years amid declining donations, a disastrous leadership transition and an endless family squabble that split the congregation.

Schuller built the church – an architectural marvel with 10,000 windows and room for nearly 3,000 worshippers and 1,000 musicians – in 1980, a decade after he began broadcasting his sermons on the “power of possibility thinking” into the homes of millions of evangelical Christians each Sunday.

Reaction to the church’s sale was at first bitter: The children of one prominent philanthropist publicly threatened to disinter their father from its cemetery and another congregant sued for $30 billion, saying the transfer to Catholic hands had “permanently desecrated, defamed, polluted and cursed” the church.

Tempers have since cooled, but the recently announced timeline for the transfer to Catholic hands has revived questions about the fate of Schuller’s ministry once it leaves behind the iconic building that gave it its name. The diocese will grant the congregation six months rent-free at a nearby Catholic church and it plans to continue filming the “Hour of Power.”

“We could film in a studio,” said John Charles, the new CEO of Crystal Cathedral Ministries. “We’re still going to have the same great preaching, the same great music and pulpit guests. The ministry is not about the building – it’s more about our congregation and who we are.”

Some, however, wonder whether the ministry will fizzle out – or shrink dramatically – without the building that gave it its name. Broadcasts of the “Hour of Power” were recently cut back to 30 minutes on Lifetime and Discovery channels and Schuller, now 85, no longer appears on the program and hasn’t attended church since last fall.

His son and daughter, who each failed to assume their father’s mantle, are no longer involved in the ministry. Sheila Schuller Coleman formed a new church after a falling out last year.

The congregation, which now numbers up to 1,700 people each Sunday, will also change its name once it moves.

“It really needs to go back to square one and say, `Who are we going to be? We can’t be what we were 10 to 15 years ago,'” said Kurt Fredrickson, an associate dean and assistant professor of pastoral ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary. “There could be resurrection there or it could be that we say goodbye to a congregation and bless them and be grateful and thank God for years and years and years of really wonderful ministry.”

Schuller tapped into California’s blossoming car culture and the optimism of a post-World War II generation when he began preaching in 1955 from the roof of a snack bar at a drive-in movie theater in suburban Orange County. He exhorted worshippers to “come as you are in the family car” and his upbeat message resonated.

By 1970, Schuller was airing the “Hour of Power” and in 1980, he dedicated the Crystal Cathedral, an architectural marvel that served as the backdrop for the show. At its peak, the broadcast attracted 20 million viewers around the world.

The Rev. Christopher Smith, the Catholic episcopal vicar and rector of the newly minted Christ Cathedral, recalls as a child watching from his grandparents’ backyard as the young, energetic evangelist preached from the roof of the drive-in theater’s concession stand. Now, Smith is in charge of a delicate transition as the diocese prepares to move into a religious and architectural touchstone cherished by evangelicals around the world.

The diocese hopes to honor Schuller and the history of his ministry with a museum that begins with the drive-in movie theater and ends with the Catholic acquisition. The diocese may also move its archives, which are currently not publicly available, to the cathedral grounds, said Smith.

“I just hope that we attend well to all the different people who are affected by this and also that this place be seen as a place where everyone is welcome to find hope and consolation and inspiration, whether they’re Catholic or not,” Smith said.

“That’s the bishop’s desire – that we are a real credible witness to Christ in the world through our work here.”